I used to roleplay. You know, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, that sort of thing. It’s not that I wanted to stop playing, but it seems everyone I used to play the games with has flaked out on me, and not I have thousands of dollars of books that won’t be useful to me until my kids grow up, and even then will probably be outdated enough to replace.
Still, I have a few memorable moments from my roleplaying days that I thought I would share. I’ll start with my early memories, and work my way up.
I first started playing Basic D&D back in 4th grade. Mike Cochard was the only other kid in school who would even talk to me. At recess at school, we’d stay inside and write up characters and invent games to play. I stayed overnight at his house once where his dad actually ran the game for us. And we played Colecovision until Mike passed out from fatigue.
In high school, Derek, Allen and I used to play D&D at Derek’s house. We set up our things on Derek’s diningroom table, and played for hours. We had charaters so advanced that we moved onto epic wargames with miniatures, where our characters would command whole armies. At these nights at Derek’s house is where I learned to eat jalapeno relish, jars of which we’d dump into some Cheez Whiz and call it a snack. We made characters for other games that we never played, simply for the joy of character creation.
Also in high school, four of us took a trip to Lagacon in Lebanon, PA. Eric went to play Advanced Squad Leader, and Allen and I played in a BattleMech tournament. We did pretty well, both scoring quite a few decapitations. We got lost on the drive home, and considered staying in a hotel, but then managed to get back on track. After the guys dropped me off at home, they got ticketed for running a red light.
In college, Brian and I played D&D with a bunch of girls who lived near him in the College Park Apartments. All but one of them had never played before, and we had somehow convinced them it would be fun. I think that some of them got more into it than we did after a while. The famous Water Buffalo incident pretty much ended our playing, when our DM discovered what her sister (and the rest of us) really meant when we kept saying things like, “Don’t tell the water buffalo,” whenever she was around.
Also in college, we played a rousing game of Shadowrun. I really don’t remember many details of the game, except that it wasn’t really our idea to double-cross everyone until they had all gotten it into their heads that we (Brian and I) were going to double-cross them. Foolish of them to think that we could be so easily thwarted.
When I was living in my apartment in Johnstown we played our first game of Vampire. Since nobody really had any experience with the game, it was quite fun to run. I had them create characters in concept based on themselves, and then ran them through a scenario using Johnstown as a backdrop. I lit black candles in my livingroom to set the mood, and when it came time for them to “become vampires” by drinking vampire blood (yes, they didn’t know any better), I spoke to each of them individually in my kitchen and had them drink spicy V8 from a specially-bought prop glass.
My return to roleplaying after college was after a long draught. For a brief period, I played Magic with a bunch of guys that worked in the Allied Hobbies store at the mall, who I met because I was working at the Arby’s next door. Those guys were ruthless, playing for real ante regardless of the card value. The only blessing there was that I didn’t have any cards that were worth anything to them.
I started playing Mech Warrior with Dave and the “crack babies” in the back of the Dem Bums sports card store. Soon after, I joined their Vampire game as a “novice”, playing a character that had been embraced (turned into a vampire), but did not believe it and/or couldn’t cope with the reality of it. My entire first session with them consisted of them trying to convince me of the merits of vampirism, and that I was among them. My first real roleplaying-only, no-rules/no-dice session.
We played Vampire on Tuesdays and played Magic: The Gathering on Wednesdays. Dave, Berta, and I would spend late nights at Denny’s playing cards. Berta would usually fall asleep at the table before the night was over. We’d eat two meals, dinner when we arrived, and breakfast when the sun came up.
Dem Bums closed. Brigham and Trish opened Random Enterprises and became new friends. We played all manner of games in their store. Werewolf, Vampire, Magic, Rage, and even a bit of D&D here and there, although I had grown so in love with the World of Darkness by that time, I hardly ever joined the D&D games. Our Shadowrun games at Random were some of the more memorable there. Berta and I went to Brigham and Trish’s Halloween wedding dressed in dragon masks.
When Random eventually closed, we picked up regular play at Larry’s apartment or even our apartment. We played many different games, mostly in the World of Darkness. Berta and I wrote an elaborate Mage adventure, and we gave the players half-size binders to keep track of all of the game elements. We played the game over the rolling black fold-up table, which was too small for the lot of us, and we started cooking for the game instead of ordering take-out.
I don’t remember why, but we stopped playing for a while. Somewhere in there, Brian and I did contract work for White Wolf to build their PC-based Vampire character creator. That project went completely awry. We were unable to reproduce their printing problems, even to the point where they were sending me printers in the mail and it would work fine for me and not for them. Our designer was beautiful and flexible, unlike the knock-off that was written to replace it. This was also when I was petitioned for info for their Pentex book, the one printed roleplaying book that contains any reference of me. Nevermind that other book.
Eventually, Larry invited me to play Werewolf with him, Matt, Dave, and Ken at Larry and Matt’s apartment, which I did. We had quite a few good stories, including the one where Ken went to the bathroom with certain events transpiring in-game. When he left the table, his character was alive. When he came back, not so much.
We played for a while at Bob’s house. This next thought is what cause me to write this whole thing, if you were interested. I have an indistinct memory of playing Werewolf at Bob’s diningroom table. Due to some interaction in the game, Ken stood up and started yelling. In-character. It was pretty scary, really. And it was so convincing, and so like Ken was his character, it left me thinking that Ken was a remarkable role-player, and that it would only be worth it to me to continue playing these games if they that inspired that level of passion in the players.
When we eventually moved the game into Bob’s basement, we had a few good laughs at Bob’s expense. Still classic are the times when Bob forgot the word for “mouth” (yeah, I know) and said “I put my speaking tube outside the antimagic field.” Another good quote is “Is that food?” This was uttered when I brought out a container of Acme pastries for the group just before Bob quickly consumed all of them.
Spending nights in Bob’s back yard talking about the game or planning adventures are some of my better memories of my 20s, of which I can’t decide says good or bad things about my life as a whole.
And then, one of the best games in recent memory was at Larry and Dave’s later apartment. Larry was out to dinner with a friend, so instead of playing our usual D&D game, I ran a session of Risus. During this game, the players were all Iron Chefs, and the mysterious secret recipe was stolen. I hadn’t had that much fun playing a role playing game in a really long time.
These days my only roleplaying exposure is via the weekly emails I get from Pyramid magazine. All of my books are boxed up for the move, and I’m really behind with any D&D supplements, which I used to buy like a crack addict.
Everyone else seems to have moved on. Nobody seems to want to be around Dave because of all of his money/responsibility issues, which makes it difficult to play with him and anyone else. It seems like Jen is always working. Bob dropped out of the group a year before everyone else to become addicted to Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft. I’ve seen Dan a few times since we stopped playing to take the kids on outings, but with the travelling distance between us and the soon arrival of kid #3 I doubt there’s much gaming in our future. Larry hasn’t answered any of the emails I’ve sent since I last heard from him. And I’m probably only remiss in contacting Ken to get a game going, though I can’t imagine what kind of game we’d play with just the two of us.
The local game shop has closed. I’m not really sure where I could go to peruse game supplements any more if I wanted to. The regular bookstore is so behind it’s farcical.
Time to throw in the towel? I wonder if my book collection is worth anything.
